As the Republican and Democratic parties are purely sectional, their collisions can result in no national benefit, but must necessarily endanger the Union, and they may well be pronounced pernicious organizations that ought to be broken up. Should the proposed fusion take place, the nation will have an opportunity, by a large majority, not merely to condemn the corrupt Democracy, but at the same time to render a salutary, needful condemnation of all sectional parties.

It is a common creed that parties are unavoidable in a republic, and with equal unanimity among the wise they are deemed a great evil. Washington warned us against the "baneful effects of party spirit." He warned us, with peculiar emphasis, against sectional parties as the great danger of our national career. Whenever they become so distinctly sectional as are the Republican and Democratic parties, they ought to be put down. That is what the peace, prosperity, and safety of every confederate republic requires. That is what is contemplated by the proposed fusion. Should it succeed, we shall have the desirable opportunity of testing, by actual experiment during a whole Presidential term, the value of our Government when administered free from the effects of party collisions. Senators and representatives, speaking the sentiments of their local constituencies untrammeled by party ties, will give a true expression of the national opinion upon all questions of policy. A President so chosen for the occasion, under no pledge but that of preserving the Union, will have no party at his back to sustain his attempted usurpation or abuse of power, and to cloak his malversation. If future parties must necessarily ensue, still the nation will have had a respite, while its great governmental machine is properly overhauled and righted up, and it will have given a salutary warning against the organization of sectional parties hereafter. It would be a death-blow to such organizations for a long time to come. Future parties will have a more salutary and less perilous basis.

Could anything like a full expression be evoked of the sentiment of Kentucky, Tennessee, and Missouri on the subject of disunion, it would go far toward giving a quietus to the question. In defiance of those three States, Louisiana and Mississippi will never attempt a disunion movement. Without the co-operation of Louisiana, Mississippi, Texas, and Arkansas, the attempt will

never be made by the Carolinas, Georgia, Alabama, and Florida. The attitude in which Kentucky and Tennessee shall be placed at the next election is, therefore, a matter of great national importance. Their concurrence in the national verdict of condemnation against the corrupt Democracy for abuse of power, wasteful extravagance, fraud, and corruption will prevent the party from claiming its defeat as the effect of mere sectional animosity, and thereby strengthening the disunion tendency at the South. The party will be compelled to endure the full weight of a really national condemnation, without any such palliative for a deserved defeat.

Its doomed defeat in the next Presidential election is so far apparent as to be virtually conceded by the more candid of the party. One of its most intelligent organs has recently had the candor to predict that the Charleston Convention will never meet, or if it does, that it will be only to disagree and separate without a nomination. No compromise that could now be patched up would prevent defeat. This the leaders see, and, therefore, there will be no compromise. With the spoils lost, the only cohesive power will be gone, and they will lack the motive for even a serious effort to prevent the party from crumbling, as it will, into unavailable fragments. All see that the unity of the party can only be preserved by the South yielding to the new Douglas dogma of non-intervention. This the South would be little likely to do for anything short of certain victory; certainly not for the sake of a barren contest and of-according to Mr. Douglas—such a brilliant personal triumph over the Southern leaders. Neither will those leaders so yield for the purpose of according an amnesty to either Mr. Guthrie or Mr. Breckinridge, who, in their overeager aspirations after the nomination, are attempting to force the obnoxious dogma upon the Democracy of Kentucky. They will be suspected of making this attempt for the purpose of forestalling and propitiating Northern support in the convention to the prejudice of their numerous competitors. This those leaders will be disposed to resent rather than reward.

Should such a split in the Democracy occur, the better part of its Northern members will flock to the Union party. Even should this split not occur, its Northern wing, upon common principles of party tactics, will vote the Union ticket in those free States where

there is no hope of benefiting their party otherwise than by thus aiding to defeat the Republican candidate. In this way, and in this worst aspect of results, the election may be thrown before the House of Representatives, where the candidate of the most central and conservative party must succeed.

The prospect is bright and cheering for breaking up these two pernicious sectional parties, whose interminable wrangles over mere abstractions about slavery brought us in 1856 to the very verge of civil war, and whose best ultimate result would be a peaceable severance of the Union. Much depends upon the elections in Kentucky and Tennessee. Victory is before us, if the Union-loving men of those States will exert themselves, as patriots should, when their country is in danger.

CHAPTER VIII.

LINCOLN'S OATH.

PUBLISHED APRIL 30, 1864.

"It was in the oath I took, that I would, to the best of my ability, preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States. I could not take the office without taking the oath. Nor was it in my view that I might take an oath to get power, and break the oath in using the power.

“I did understand, however, that my oath to preserve the Constitution to the best of my ability, imposed upon me the duty of preserving, by every indispensable means, that Government-that nation of which that Constitution was the organic law.

"I felt that measures, otherwise unconstitutional, might become lawful, by becoming indispensable to the preservation of the Constitution, through the preservation of the nation."-A. Lincoln.

WHENCE this interpolation upon or new construction of the oath? The Constitution limits the President to the use of welldefined means or measures in the performance of his duty in its preservation, protection, and defense. According to any fair and honest interpretation, his oath confined him to the use of such means and such only. With no propriety can he claim that, while willfully, knowingly violating the Constitution, he is either preserving, protecting, or defending it. If the nation had deemed it wise or proper to permit him or any other functionary to use other measures, which he might suppose indispensable from great national necessity, the Constitution would have so said. Not having so said, his conceded actual or purposed willful violations of the Constitution are plain breaches of the oath he had to take in order to get the power. Mr. Lincoln falls completely within the censure of his own precept, that he might not rightfully "take an oath to get power, and break the oath in using the power."

"Indispensable means"—what are they? They are such for which there is no substitute, such as about the efficacy of which

there can be no dispute or even difference of opinion-whose efficacy ought to be foreknown, when it is made the pretense for usurping power not granted. None of this can be predicated of Mr. Lincoln's abolition proclamation. He himself distinctly admits, in the very letter under notice, that by this measure he only "hoped for greater gain than loss," and was not "entirely confident" that the hope would be realized. He confessedly did not feel sure that the loss would not be greater than the gain. It was merely an untried experiment, which might result beneficially, as it might also prove injurious. Surely, in no court of conscience can such means be called indispensable, or can he obtain absolution for their use in violation of his oath. Oaths would be of little avail if they were so easy to evade, or if those who take them were allowed an unrestrained discretion in determining for themselves when they can be rightfully violated.

It is a matter of awakening and alarming interest to the nation to find a President who is anxiously seeking a re-election, and who has under his control a million of armed men and a billion of dollars, avowing his intention to disregard the official oath, by the taking of which he obtained his power, whenever and however he may choose to think the violation required by the interest of the nation. The million and a half of conservative voters who desire his defeat, even the most anxious among them, will accord him and his friends much more real honesty in their opinion that his re-election is a more imperative national necessity, far more so, than his submission to the dictation under which he abolitionized the war. Whatever in his own opinion or that of his followers may be the confidence due to his integrity that he will not, to promote his election, be seduced into the abuse of such enormous power, yet he and they ought to know that full one-half of the loyal part of the nation do not share that confidence. On the contrary, they cannot suppress the fear that the dominant party will use that power to secure him another term, and, at the end of that, again use it for its perpetuation in his hands or in those of some equally serviceable man.